Vortech Says This In Regards To Intercoolers/after. Do Y'all Concur?

Late to the party as usual.

I've always understood the A2W I/C as being not as efficient at dropping charge temps, as it is discussed above. Despite that, I am running one as a matter of smaller packaging, Yes it is way more complicated, and in the grand scheme, having to create space in the trunk for the "second heat exchanger" was way more involved than just stuffing a big assed A2A in front of my radiator. The front end of a Fairmont just isn't as condusive to hiding that. It concerns me though that @Bullitt347 was able to drop charge temps by removing all of the junk that I currently have struggled to build, and to that I guess I need to ask how much water was in the closed loop, and how big was the radiator and the cooling fan that was tasked w/ cooling the water back down?

Initially we had a radiator for the intercooler mounted in front of the engine radiator. This intercooler radiator was much the same as was/is used on Terminator Cobras except it was the larger aftermarket one that everybody steps up to when they start making more power with those cars. We did not have a separate fan for it, just relied on the air passing through the front grill area. Car had a Saleen nose on it, so it had more open area to the radiator than you typical Gt front end. The intercooler tank in the trunk is a 7.6 gal capacity tank made by Chiseled Performance. like pictured. It comes with it's own water pump inside. A Rule 2000 pump rated at 33 gallons per min. From the tank the water flows through -12 hose up to the intercooler core mounted in a upper inlet manifold which in turn is mounted on a Trick Flow R lower manifold. Once the water flowed through the intercooler core it then had to go through the radiator mounted in front of the engine radiator and then back to the tank in the trunk. It was when we removed the plumbing from the intercooler core to the radiator, the radiator itself and just plumbed it straight from the tank to the intercooler core and back to the tank that we saw a 30* drop in air charge temps. I am sure that removing the extra hose and radiator, plus the fact that the pump was trying to push all of this water forward during hard acceleration led to the lower air charge temps. The water flow through the intercooler core had to improve a bunch by removing this "restriction". Adding ice to this tank before a run just makes it that much more efficient at lower charge temps. Even then, without ice, it works quite well. With a 8 plus gallon reservoir if you count all of the water in the tank, hoses and intercooler it takes a lot to get the water even warm. It is more like lukewarm after extended driving.

Noobz347 said:

Unless I've missed something, that part was in reference to the track setup when ice was being used.

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No, you didn't miss something, it wasn't discussed until just now^^. Bullitt347 had a heat exchanger for a radiator w/o a dedicated fan attached, and an 7.6 gal reservoir, w/ a big assed internal pump.
I have a factory Bosch Cobra pump, pumping water out of a 2.5 gal reservoir through two fan cooled radiators to the IC core, and back. IDK how mine will differ given that I have those two actual radiator/fans back there, but I'm sure that there'll be significant restriction for my poor little Bosch Cobra pump to try and exchange the water quickly enough.

Just another one of those time will tell things I guess.

revhead347 said:

Vortech has been pushing this for over a decade. The reality is that the THEIR water to air intercooler doesn't do anything. Vortech used to be king of the market with only Paxton putting any real pressure on them. Then ATI introduced their ProCharger line for the Mustang. Initially they didn't sell very well because the head units had a nasty habit of blowing chunks into the engine. ProCharger eventually improved the quality of the head unit. Every kit came with an intercooler already designed it. Vortech has been running the same setups for 20 years. Instead of redesigning them all to include an air to air intercooler, they designed a half ass air to water to air cooler that would fit into their current kits. It didn't really do anything because it was over complicated and too small. Then they started a campaign of talking down the intercooler as a concept. ProCharger setups continued to yield better performance over all, and Vortech continued to lose market share. What they refer to as "parasitic loss" is actually just a low of physics. Pressure x Volume / Temperature is constant in a closed system. If you cool down the air charge, the pressure is going to drop. You are still getting the same volume of air, just at a lower pressure and temperature which is more friendly to the engine. Vortech still builds some of the best quality head units available, and I find it unfortunate that they have used a scandalous business tactic to undermine the competition instead of just promoting the quality of their product.

Kurt

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Colder air is better for the engine. Yes, however chemistry and physics also state that colder air has more oxygen molecules per given volume. Colder air is denser air. Yes, same volume but more oxygen content. Air is air, and temp is temp. That's why also force inducted cars run so well in the winter (I'm from Houston).

I'm new to the Forum (Was a member back in the late 90's-y2k) so correct me if I'm wrong.